being5 wrote:We have this wonderful, very precise description of reality given by the Buddha (and others who have followed his path and experienced it themselves - some of them here on DW even!).
So, in terms of each discrete momentary arising of the five aggregates and consciousness (is the word citta?) what is it that clings instead of letting it rise and fall -what, exactly, grabs on?
The standard answer is that it's a malformed question; the question itself is flawed.
It's sort of like you might be talking to a monotheist about evolution or the origin of the world. You say, "There is no God (because there is no evidence)" and they might reply, "So, what is it that created the world and created life?"
Implicit in the question, "What is it that clings\feels\lives\etc" is the presumption that there is something more than what is already present. To be clear, consciousness is a particularly complex phenomenon and in the 21st century, humans will make breakthroughs in this regard... But even then, the persistent skepticism will remain and be phrased in a different way. Having knowledge of the specific inner workings of consciousness, how it begins, how it ends or might be "reborn" after death, when all of this is known, even then, people might ask, "But WHAT IS IT that experiences this process?" But if you look directly at your experiences, there is nothing more: There is physical stuff, six sensory faculties, and contact between the two, and nothing more. Like God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the ego is without any particular substance upon which to even begin a rational inquiry into what it might be. Like "racial background" it is something that doesn't exist in reality, but has the appearance of existing merely because there is a popular ignorance, a common agreement that it exists, and this influences how we think, act, and perceive things.
Does that answer your question?